New York 2140 review: Kim Stanley Robinson's masterly novel of the future

By Rjurik Davidson

June 5, 2017 — 12.13pm

SCIENCE FICTIONNew York 2140Kim Stanley Robinson Hachette, $29.99.

How should literature approach the problem of climate change? The genre most equipped to do so is science fiction and pre-eminent among "cli-fi" writers is Kim Stanley Robinson, who has assembled the most significant oeuvre on the climate disaster facing us.

For Robinson, one of science fiction's primary tasks is to think through our medium-term problems – neither to gaze into the far future where everything becomes pure speculation nor to write about the "day after tomorrow" but rather to confront challenges that will face humanity in the decisive 20 to 150 years in the future.

This period is close enough to ground Robinson's speculations in real science, yet it's far enough away to remain recognisably hypothesising. If you want to know what New York may well look like in 100 years, Robinson's latest novel, New York 2140, is the book to turn to. It's a work of far-ranging intellectual interest; it's a masterly book not just about climate change but economics and geography too.

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A work of far-ranging intellectual interest: New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson.

In New York 2140 New York is part of the "intertidal region", the geographic space reclaimed by the rising ocean. This event has created immense destruction of coastal regions and also thrown up the key question of property rights: who owns the ruins beneath or sticking up through the ocean surface? As with all property, hedge funds and speculators have moved in to exploit the market. His future New York, a "super-Venice" where the avenues have become canals, is a thing of wonder. It's a plausible, bustling and complex place of hope and disappointment.

Robinson tells his story through the residents of the co-operative Met Building, including a love-struck hedge-fund broker, a black female police inspector, two treasure-hunting homeless boys, the building's superintendent, and two coders who are kidnapped in the opening chapter for releasing anti-capitalist algorithms into the financial system. As with the realism he aspires to, Robinson gives us a neat cross-section of society. They live and love and resist the ruination around them.

When an anonymous offer is made to buy out the co-operative and simultaneously someone sabotages the building itself, it's clear that things are awry. What follows is a sprawling and magnificent novel, a slow-burn political thriller that reads like a futuristic version of 19th-century realism. By its end, the story has transcended the small questions of individuals to the large ones of history.

Robinson's strengths shine in New York 2140. The book is one extended exercise of thoughtfulness; the science is taken seriously as are the laws of capitalism. As the book develops, Robinson's anti-capitalist politics become more central. A hurricane approaches and the intertidal housing bubble begins to burst, leading Robinson's characters to ask: could there be some way that the rapacity of capitalism could be ameliorated or transcended?

There's a discernable earnestness to Robinson's mode of thinking. In some of his previous books this has resulted in a certain flatness of narrative. Robinson's characters are for the most part good people trying to do good things in bad situations – an optimistic view far from the nightmares of, say, Cormac McCarthy's The Road. But New York 2140 suffers from no such problem. Rather, it speeds along like a boat zipping through his semi-submerged New York, exciting and fascinating in equal measure.

One criticism to be made of New York 2140 is that in political terms the future seems too close to the one we know. In the world of 2140, liberal capitalism has forged on more or less unchanged. In one sense this is perfectly plausible: capitalism has of course shown itself to be eminently flexible. But in another it's more doubtful: we're already seeing the stresses on liberalism that recent decades of crisis have wrought.

Where then are the extreme religious and political movements that accompany extreme situations? Why would political change be siphoned through our current institutions? In 100 years, the world of politics will surely be as changed utterly as the New York portrayed in this brilliant and fascinating book.

Rjurik Davidson's most recent novel, The Stars Askew, is published by Pan Macmillan.